Sweet Lady Gaga

A couple of weeks ago I received a call from Dana of Bread and Wine Catering. She had gotten a call to do Lady Gaga’s birthday event. The trick was that she wanted a “Sweet Dessert Spread” including a Birthday cake. I have worked with Dana on several events and her wonderful catering company always does top of the line and high end events. She wanted to see if I would be interested in making the birthday cake and several desserts. All of this for 100 people.

I gladly said yes and immediately started to do research on Lady Gaga. I needed to understand just a bit of her personality, music, thoughts on life, music, philosophy, etc. This is a must because the idea of just making her sweets with no personal direction was just not an option. If I could even remotely capture a hint of her, then I could translate that into not just desserts, but sweets that touch a personal note in her.

In her latest Grammy appearance, she rested in an egg 3 hours before her performance claiming that this was her “incubation” stage where she would be reborn on stage. This led me to the creative path of creating a “Rebirth” cake. I knew this would be very difficult as I have created a dark chocolate dessert before in a similar shape and it took me along time to do them as “egg” molds don’t exist. So I would have to make them myself. This process alone took 3 days. To replicate the color fluidity of a natural egg, I chose to make a coconut mousse for the white and the yolk would be a passionfruit cream. So the labor of love began and testing my patience on patience. Another 2 days went by and it was done. Happily so and pleasantly content.

I also had to come up with 3 other desserts. One was called “Blood Suck”. It was a take on her element of having blood incorporated in a perfume and along with the fact that she likes meringues. Since she has a vice for dark chocolate, I had to incorporate a dark chocolate and in the sexiest form I know, steeped in lavender called “Lavender Lust”.

The final dessert was the birthday cake. Some of the colors I was given for presentation was pink, beige, black and green. With this color spectrum I came up with a cake that was primarily raspberry mousse, then a cappuccino creme brulee, a layer of black vanilla mousse and finally an almond butter cake. But it had to feed 100 people. In my training in Paris for pastries, I learned that a cake should always “taste” wonderful. I have to admit i’m not a fan of alot of american cakes with their dry, bland cakes and every flavored and colored buttercream under the sun. All this just to make whimsical shapes that are loud but have no lasting sense of flavor balance and elegance. So keeping with my instinct, I with the help of Dana and her lovely daugher Romy, came up with a rectangular cake that was 25in. in length, 6in. wide and 6 in. high. A very large cake that was equally as challenging both in concept and execution.

I am now a certified Monster myself! Thanks to Dana and Daniel Flores for the opportunity that I greatly appreciate.